TRILOK GURTU
REVIEWS
Trilok Gurtu & the Arke String Quartet, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow
ROB ADAMS - The Herald - February 05 2008
Last time Trilok Gurtu played the Old Fruitmarket, the rake sloped down towards the stage and there was a power cut. I'm still not convinced about the reversal of the layout of the venue, although I understand the reasoning behind it, but this was the Indian percussionist at full wattage.
Of all the collaborations he's featured in - and there have been many - Gurtu's meeting with the Arke String Quartet has to rank among the best. The Italians, who substitute double-bass for cello, use pick-ups to enhance their instruments' natural sounds and are not above adopting ukulele-style strumming if the music so demands, create a fabulous sound. They can be an all harmonics and flutey-toned backdrop or upfront soloists - violinist Carlo Cantini's bite and intensity is almost supernatural - or they can gang up with Gurtu in fiercely tight riffing reminiscent of the percussionist's sometime partner in crime, guitarist John McLaughlin.
Another Gurtu co-conspirator, Joe Zawinul, sprang to mind with Cantini's street-sounds-flavoured composition, Fez. And if the rowdy behaviour of a previous audience inspired another piece by Gurtu himself, such disrespect wasn't going to happen here as Gurtu seduced the auditorium with awesome percussion magic and pure theatre, culminating in the audience singing along with his intricate tabla rhythm vocables.
Earlier, another cross-cultural collaboration, India Alba, had set the scene admirably, merging adapted pipe marches with Indian violin and tabla ragas, cittern-led Scots-Indian melodies and the late Gordon Duncan's famous bagpipes setting of AC/DC's heavy-rock anthem, Thunderstruck. Along with Gurtu's gang, this quartet brought Celtic Connections 2008's Old Fruitmarket programme to a satisfying close while keeping the audience primed for future adventures.
"TALKING TABLAS"
By Cynthia Wilson - www.wwclassicsonline.com
If ever there was a truly cyntillating sound, it comes from Trilok Gurtu's talking tablas. Super star Gurtu is the classical music world's best kept secret, but a famed and favourite at festivals of jazz, pop and world music all around the globe. Classic in his disciplined approach to percussion, Trilok Gurtu has collaborated on over 80 CD's with the most eclectic group of top musicians imaginable.
Now celebrating 20 years of such collaborative performances, Gurtu has recently released a double CD, 'The Definitive Trilok Gurtu'. Actually, with someone so eclectic, catching him on merely two CD's could really never be definitive!
We caught up with him last week when he performed, again in incomparable collaboration, at Amsterdam's famed classical temple, The Concertgebouw. The occasion was the 60th anniversary of Radio Netherlands Worldwide whose broadcasts in 10 different languages around the globe foster not only freedom of press and expression but support correct information concerning Holland, its culture and politics (as Radio France is to France, Deutsche Welle to Germany and BBC World to the UK).
Who better to explicate this international mission than a musician like Gurtu, who, in said concert, worked with musicians from Curaçao,Venezuela, Argentina, Suriname, Mali, France, and o yes, Holland.
Front stage Concertgebouw was exciting, backstage was fascinating, 'the making of' of these performances where Trilok Gurtu was exemplary in his dedication to great music, rehearsing for the first time with all the other musicians involved: 'good music is one, it is not music from Africa or from America or from Germany, it is one like God is one...musicians make bridges not borders, that is what the world requires'.
His drum set alone demands an extensive and specific set up as it is a combination with a parallel only found in hip fusion cooking: a good chunk of fresh Indian vegetables, a pinch of jazz salt, a good dose of worldly peppers topped by a sauce of personally supervised spices collected on his travels. The correct metal bucket of water was found only at the last minute, making Gurtu's famed, intimate water rhythms thankfully possible.
His interest in all music is boundless. 'What's that?', he asked as my ringtone (Scherzo from Bruckner's Seventh Symphony) interrupted the conversation. 'You know who rights the best melodies? Mozart! You hear them once, you never can forget them!' 'All jazz is really Bach, Bach wrote the best progressions'...'know any good young Dutch composers? Tell me!'.
Food (and wine) are the passions that accompany this musical chef. Trilok Gurtu is always interested in, talking about, and enjoying good food, as eclectic in his taste buds as in his musical taste. He is open and encouraging to all musicians, as long as they are serious about their work. Totally demanding in how he spends his time, a long drive to an isolated rehearsal location was spent in practice, tapping the surfaces within reach in the Jeep that transported him (with a small trailer full of his drum set dutifully in pursuit). Turning up the heat in frosty Holland, he smiled: 'I need a bit more India!'.
What would it really sound like all wondered, this elegant Indian in his beautiful silk outfits, barely viewable amidst a battery of percussion odds and ends, including of course his water bucket?
Sound checks were lengthy and demanding, the tuning and acoustics have to be just right, but all the collaborations were warm and intimate as musicians who had always dreamed of performing with him actually got down to business: the classical timpanist Nando Russo ('I have followed him since I was a child'), the Dutch pop phenomenon Bløf ('we always thought, if we could ever play with someone like Gurtu!')
'Yes, yes, good, good, we will make this work', he encouraged. It sounded, surprisingly enough, melodious. Gurtu sings percussion, teaching timing by getting his students to sing rhythms, and literally singing them himself, as when he takes the pop solo to new heights with his vocal acrobatics.
Trilok Gurtu is at home in any musical setting, with singers, with a classical string quartet, with the brass section of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, even with royalty itself. Backstage again, but now after the concert, Holland's Princess Máxima did not rush home as was expected, but stayed on to meet Gurtu, fascinated too by all the musical tête-a-têtes he had inspired.
Trilok Gurtu once again came and conquered, leaving his public in breathless admiration, excited and certainly intrigued.
Cyntillating for sure.
Jazz Cafe, London
John L Waters
Friday February 23, 2007
The Guardian
You never know quite what you'll get with Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu. Of course, there are fabulous sounds and rhythms, but the context is always new. At last year's Womad festival, he was fronting a loud, multicultural fusion band; recent projects have seen him team up with DJ Robert Miles and Sting.
Tonight's gig, like his new album Arkeology, is a collaboration with the Arke String Quartet, an Italian group with double bass instead of cello. This is a plus, since it means that bassist Stefano Dall'ora can team up with Gurtu's hybrid drum kit: more western on the floor, but with tablas on the top. These accomplished players mesh and weave in the best 20th-century manner, and violinist Valentino Corvino is a passionate soloist. Their tunes imply Indian, Balkan and Celtic rhythms, in asymmetric time signatures that suit Gurtu down to the last demisemiquaver: he flies around the six-, seven- and 14-beat patterns.
On record, the sound is warm and pleasing. Played live, it's hotter and spicier. Arke play with all the fire of a jazz group without losing the emotional expressiveness of strings; there are hints of the Mahavishnu and Penguin Cafe Orchestras. However, this collaboration has a charm and character all its own, typified by compositions such as the sprightly, reel-like Taranta Suite, the moody Fes and Gurtu's engaging Balahto, which has a brief reprise at the end of a well-deserved encore.
Trilok Gurtu with the Arkè String Quartet
Arkeology
SONGLINES
Another Trilok triumph.
Once again, the Indian percussionist and composer Trilok Gurtu proves himself to be among the world’s most adventurous, skilled and intelligent fusionists, on this spectacular marriage between East and West, in collaboration with Italy’s Arkè String Quartet. Many of the best fusions are sound collisions, their very success based on a thrilling clashing of cultures. Arkeology is different, for it seeks to emphasise not the differences but the seamless empathy between two apparently contrasting musical worlds.
The opener, ‘Balahto’, is one of Gurtu’s three featured compositions and is typical of the approach, kicking in with an urgent insistent bass pattern over skittering Asian percussion before the Western classical strings take up a dancing melody with a vaguely Celtic feel.
Nobody’s showboating or trying to outplay each other: every instrument, Eastern and Western is carefully calibrated in perfect balance.
Oddly, it’s often the compositions by the Italian quartet that have the strongest Asian feel. ‘Kermanşah’ is written by violinist Valentino Corvino but has Gurtu’s dreamy tabla playing to the fore, and bursts of Indian tala singing over some lovely, Gypsy-like strings, while ‘Fes’, composed by fellow violinist Carlo Catnini, is another sublimely moody piece that unites Asian, Mediterranean and North African influences. There’s both an attention to detail and a broader, cinematic quality. To say that in places it sounds like high-class film music is no criticism at all.
Nigel Williamson